Best CRM for Dog Daycares (and How to Set It Up)

The best CRM for a dog daycare is one that follows every family from the first call to a paid membership, and that your front desk will actually use. Gingr or similar pet care software handles reservations, vaccines and packages. A marketing CRM such as HighLevel covers what comes before the booking and what happens when a member quietly stops coming.

Why dog daycares lose leads without a CRM

Dog daycares lose leads in the steps between "I'm interested" and "my dog is a regular", because those steps are spread across phone calls, voicemails, emails and paper forms. A new family has to send vaccine records, sign a waiver, book a temperament evaluation, show up for it, and then buy a package. Every one of those steps is a place to stall.

The trigger is usually a life change with a date attached: a puppy coming home, a return to the office next month, a trip already booked. If the family hears nothing for two days after leaving a voicemail, they call the next facility on the map.

Typical places a family drops out:

• The inquiry. A call during morning drop-off goes to voicemail, and nobody calls back until after lunch.
• The records. The owner promises to send vaccine records "tonight", forgets, and nobody follows up.
• The evaluation. It gets booked, then missed, and nobody reschedules it.
• The first week. The dog has a great first day, but no one offers a package before the excitement wears off.
• The quiet exit. A member goes from three days a week to none, and the first sign is an unused package months later.

Your pet care software sees only some of this. A CRM sees all of it, in one pipeline.

What we automate

• Instant reply to every inquiry, by text and email, with your evaluation steps and a link to upload records.
• Missed-call text-back for calls that ring out during drop-off and pick-up.
• Record and waiver reminders until the vaccine records arrive, then a prompt to book the evaluation.
• Evaluation reminders and no-show rescheduling, so a missed slot becomes a new booking, not a lost family.
• A first-week sequence that follows the first day with the report card, a check-in and a package or membership offer.
• Review requests sent to every regular at a natural moment, never only to the happy ones (Google's review policy bans selective asking).
• Reactivation for members whose attendance drops, plus pre-season boarding reminders before summer travel and the holidays.
• Source tracking, so you can see which channel brings evaluations and members, not just calls.

HighLevel alongside your software

HighLevel works best next to your pet care software, not in place of it. Your staff already run the day in Gingr or a similar platform, and moving reservations, vaccine tracking and point of sale is a disruption with little upside. Instead, each system does what it is good at.

The two connect through whatever integrations or exports your software supports, so a family moves from "inquiry" to "member" without anyone typing the details twice. If your texting runs through HighLevel, the texting number must be registered for A2P 10DLC (The Campaign Registry) and marketing texts need consent (47 CFR 64.1200).

How setup works

1. Assess. We map how a family reaches you today, from first contact to first package, and pull a few weeks of call logs and inquiries to see where they stall.
2. Prioritize. We build the pipeline stages and the automations that close the biggest gap first, usually the inquiry reply and the evaluation follow-up.
3. Execute. We set up HighLevel in your name, connect your phone, website forms and ads, link it to your pet care software, register texting, and train the front desk in a short session with a one-page cheat sheet.
4. Measure. Each month you see inquiries, evaluations booked, evaluations completed and new members, by source, and we adjust the weakest step.

To see how these automations play out over a member's lifetime, read the guide to repeat customers for dog daycares. The marketing automation guide covers the first three sequences in detail.

How VETS Growth Marketing helps

We take the CRM project off your plate: we build the pipeline, write the messages in your voice, connect HighLevel to the software your staff already use, and keep it running. The CRM account and every contact stay in your name, the setup is a project with a go-live date, and we report in evaluations and new members rather than messages sent. Book a growth consultation and we will trace where your last month's inquiries went.